BUSINESS PEOPLE

BUSINESS PEOPLE; Producer's New Script: A Media General Deal

By Daniel F. Cuff

Published: October 22, 1987

Burt Sugarman is a film producer who has become involved in a number of diverse investments in the last four years. His most recent such non-Hollywood venture is as leader of a group that said it might seek control of Media General Inc.

Starting in 1983 with control of the Giant Portland and Masonry Cement Company of Columbia, S.C., Mr. Sugarman has gone on to take interests in Barris Industries, which has produced such television programs as ''The Gong Show'' and ''The Dating Game''; Rally's, a hamburger chain, and Clark Equipment, a maker of forklift trucks.

The common denominator of these investments is not immediately apparent, although the producer has said he likes to buy interests in basic industries. He has been able to turn around the once-unprofitable cement company and make it the base for his diversification moves. Mr. Sugarman was not available yesterday to discuss his strategy; his secretary said he was traveling for three days and could not be reached.

The disclosure this week that the Sugarman group might seek to acquire Media General, a big newspaper and broadcast holding company based in Richmond, puzzled both the company and analysts.

''It's passing strange,'' said Louis E. Hannen, an analyst with Wheat First Securities in Richmond. The reason is that a family trust, the D. Tennant Bryan Media Trust, owns more than two-thirds of the company's class B stock. The trust was formed to keep the company independent and Mr. Bryan, the company's chairman, said there were no plans to sell. Mr. Sugarman ''would have to break the trust, and that would be unlikely,'' Mr. Hannen said.

Giant Group Ltd., of which Mr. Sugarman is chairman, leads an investment group, which includes Barris Industries, that owns 9.8 percent of Media General. Some 3.5 percent of the stake was acquired in the spring.

Giant Group is based in Beverly Hills, Calif., where Mr. Sugarman, 48, grew up. Some critics have praised a number of his films, including ''Children of a Lesser God'' and ''Crimes of the Heart.''